


this is (not) a simulation

by shati



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen, The Sims
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-10
Updated: 2013-12-10
Packaged: 2018-01-04 05:18:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1076984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shati/pseuds/shati
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We got Regina a computer game,” she mumbles. “And I think – well, I thought she'd get it out of her system, but.”</p><p>“But what?”</p><p>Emma sighs. “It's hard to tell that apart from practicing.”</p><p>“Practicing . . . ?”</p><p>She grabs Mary Margaret's hands. “Just promise me. Promise me if something in this house catches on fire, you'll <i>leave the house</i>.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is (not) a simulation

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to apologize to Maine. But not to Moxie. Never to Moxie.

“I mean, you're basically under house arrest,” Emma says. She feels awkward. This is an awkward situation. Her ankle itches; she scratches at it with her other foot. “And trust me when I say I know there's nothing more boring than doing time. So we figured . . .”

Next to her, Henry nods encouragingly. In front of her, Regina doesn't.

Emma takes a deep breath. “We figured you could use something to pass the time.”

“It's a computer game!” Henry looks pleased with himself. With all of them, which is probably the only reason Regina hasn't bitten Emma's head off (figuratively). Yet. (Figuratively?) “I helped her pick it out.”

“You, uh, do have a computer, right?” Emma says, trying to remember whether she's ever seen another computer in the house besides Henry's. “Like, from after MS-DOS? Please tell me Windows updates made it into Storybrooke. Before I arrived. Because that's a lot of updates.” Fear coils in her gut, cold and heavy. “Please tell me you aren't all still using AOL dial-up.”

Regina turns her uncomprehending stare from Emma to the discs Henry presses into in her hand. “'The Sims'?”

* * *

(Windows updates only made it to Henry's computer.

Regina leans over, looking _way_ too fascinated (installing updates, 7% done) and Emma can't help but raise her eyebrows. “It's not waking up,” says Regina.

Christ.

“Too soon,” says Emma.)

* * *

“. . . and you pick an outfit. There.” Henry points. “Good, that looks like you. Now me.”

Three sets of eyes follow the cursor: hair (brown), clothes, personality. Regina sits back, satisfied.

“Now do Emma!”

Regina frowns, no longer satisfied. “Emma doesn't live in my house.”

“Neither does Henry,” Emma says. Judging by the look on Regina's face, this was in every way possible the wrong thing to say. Judging by _logic_ , this was in every way possible the wrong thing to say. She coughs. “You can make another household. You get ten neighborhoods, I think? A whole town.”

Mercifully, Regina lets her change the subject. “A whole town,” she echoes.

“Yeah, you know. We figured it was right up your alley.” Emma hooks a chair with one foot and drags it closer. “There, click on that house and you can make another family.”

Regina's eyes narrow.

* * *

“I do _not_ dress like that,” Emma says.

“True.” Regina studies the pixellated figure on the screen. “The sweatsuit matches.”

“That's not even – jeans don't need to match, Regina. And I wear _clean_ clothes.” Jeans stay clean until you've worn them three times, everyone knows that. “You know what, whatever. Do I get the house to myself?”

“No.”

She frowns over Regina's shoulder: a pink cardigan. “Is that . . .”

* * *

“Hey.”

Mary Mar – her m – Snow White looks so happy to see her that Emma almost ducks right back out the door in terror. That's the kind of excitement that carries expectations. Expectations of daughterhood. Commitment. Emotional stability. Healthy family bonding. “Emma!”

“Can we, uh. Can we talk?”

Mary Margaret's face lights up. “Oh, Emma, I would love to. About --”

“Regina,” Emma says quickly, and Mary Margaret's face falls.

“Oh,” she says, in the voice that sounds more like Mary Margaret than Snow White. “Well, of course we can talk. What is it?”

“Actually, it's more . . .” She tries to shove her hands in her pockets, and discovers they won't fit. Maybe she _should_ try sweatsuits. “Okay. Say you're swimming.”

Eyes locked on hers, Mary Margaret nods.

“In a pool.” Emma takes a deep breath. “And the ladder to climb out . . . isn't there. What would you do?”

Mary Margaret stares at her.

Emma stares back.

“Emma?”

“Just answer the question!” she says. “Indulge me.”

“I would . . .” Mary Margaret says, and laughs a little. “I guess I'd just have to pull myself out without a ladder. Or I'd swim to the shallow end and step out. Or if none of that worked I'd call for help and – I don't know, float on my back? Emma, what is this? Why are you asking me about pools?”

“We got Regina a computer game,” she mumbles. “And I think – well, I thought she'd get it out of her system, but.”

“But what?”

Emma sighs. “It's hard to tell that apart from practicing.”

“Practicing . . . ?”

She grabs Mary Margaret's hands. “Just promise me. Promise me if something in this house catches on fire, you'll _leave the house._ ”

* * *

“So how's it going?”

Henry's taken over for a while, and he's absorbed in the game, which leaves Emma with no one to talk to but the artist formerly known as the Evil Queen. Maybe they should give Regina a new title, she thinks. The Less Evil Queen. The Less Evil Mayor? The Hopefully Less Evil Former Mayor.

(Does this make David the deputy formerly known as Prince?

No one in this town appreciates her jokes.

If she's going to be honest with herself, no one outside this town would appreciate them either, but it would be _different_ , because they would _get_ them.)

The Hopefully Less Evil Former Mayor gives her a disdainful look. “How is what going?”

“The game,” Emma says, nodding at the computer. “I mean, have you been having fun with it?”

“Hardly.” Regina folds her arms. “It's dull and repetitive. It's difficult enough to get Henry fed and out the door in time for school, but he keeps spending all his free time with _you._ All the households are filled and there's no way to go beyond this one town, and I'm surrounded by idiots who mumble the same gibberish over and over --” She stops short, mouth still open, looking suddenly, intensely pained.

“Imagine that,” Emma says. She's not going to laugh. If she laughs, Regina will murder her, and Henry will be so disappointed.

“Money is tight, and the furniture options are hideous. I've been trying to get a promotion for days now, but I don't have enough charisma.”

Emma blinks slowly at her. Opens her mouth. Considers her options. “You don't say.”

“ _Points_ ,” Regina hisses. “I don't have enough charisma points.”

* * *

“Oh, yeah, the cemetary. I like that one. It's spooky.”

Regina ignores her in favor of clicking her way around the already well-hydrated garden. Which zooms them over, which means Emma sees --

 _way_ more graves than usual.

“Whoa,” she says.

Regina selects another plot of flowers to water.

“Regina,” she says.

The grave nearest them says SNOW WHITE. So does the grave next to it. So does the grave behind it. And she knew about the first three, but there are two more behind them. Three to the side. Four more . . .

“Christ, Regina!”

“ _What?_ ” says Regina, spinning her chair. Emma is distracted for one critical moment by a wave of chair envy. Maybe she can fit a spinny office chair into her sheriff budget. Maybe – Regina is still talking. “They wither if I don't water them!”

For a surreal split second Emma wonders why she needs to water corpses, but when she focuses on the computer screen Sim Regina is still patiently dousing tulips around the edge of a lawn well-fertilized with Emma's mother. “How many Snow Whites have you killed?”

“I've lost track,” says Regina, smiling like the cat that laid waste to an entire town of canaries, burned their homes, and salted their fields.

“Does Henry know?”

The smile fades. “Well . . .”

Emma narrows her eyes.

“He usually picks my house or yours,” Regina hedges.

“He doesn't know.”

“They died of natural causes,” says Regina, very quietly.

“ _Regina._ ”

“Fire and water are natural.”

Henry will know Archie's phone number.

* * *

“Regina killed Snow White?” says Archie.

Emma pulls the phone away from her ear in order to scowl at it, remembers that Archie won't _see_ her glare through a cell phone, and restores it to its former station in life. “No -- yes. Not really Snow White.”

She can almost hear Archie's confusion. Like a faint, staticky buzz.

No, that's the shitty service in Storybrooke. Ugh. Maine.

“Henry and I got her a copy of _The Sims_ ,” she says. “She discovered you can delete the pool ladder after the Sim goes swimming and they'll just drown.”

“Ah,” says Archie. “Well. That's actually not particularly uncommon. And as you said, it's not really Snow White. Do you think she has a good grasp on the difference between reality and fantasy?”

“Well,” says Emma. She thinks she sounds admirably patient, under the circumstances. “No, actually. Considering she's a fairy tale character with magic powers.”

“Ah,” says Archie again.

“Forty-three Snow Whites, Archie.”

“ _Ah_ ,” says Archie.

* * *

“You need to stop murdering Mary Margarets,” Emma says when the front door opens.

Regina blinks at her. Then she looks, very pointedly, at the empty space behind Emma, where Henry _isn't_ standing, ready for their visit.

“This isn't Henry's visit,” Emma says. “This is an intervention. You have a problem, and there are people -- I'm pretty sure there's at least one person who cares about y --”

Regina shuts the door in her face.

* * *

“You still need to stop murdering Mary Margarets,” Emma says when it reopens.

“ _You_ need to stop hammering a hole through my front door,” says Regina. “I want that door intact. It's mosquito season. You do realize that Storybrooke went _twenty eight years_ without mosquito season and now it's here? I hope you're happy with yourself.”

A cranefly lands on the wall next to Emma. She shrieks, because it's a fucking demon insect. Maine is horrible.

Regina laughs, and closes the door.

* * *

When the door reopens, Regina looks murderous.

“You can't kill me,” Emma says hastily. “I never showed David where the homicide paperwork is.”

Regina narrows her eyes, but pulls the door open wider and steps aside.

“Why Maine?” Emma asks as she moves into the foyer, keeping her eyes on the cranefly in case it decides to start something. “I mean, you guys are mostly from European fairy tales, right? But you curse everyone to this world and it's . . . small town Maine. And Belle is _Australian_. Unless she's from New Zealand. I can never tell.”  
  
“Belle is not Australian,” Regina says primly. “Australians happen to speak like people from Belle's land.” Then she frowns. “Well, only like Belle and her father, but I'm sure there's an explanation.”

“And small town Maine is _boring_ , but not really curse-worthy. Especially outside of mosquito season.” The door shuts behind her, and Emma breathes a sigh of relief. The cranefly is still outside. “Plus it's the wrong genre. I mean, I think small town Maine, I don't think fairy tales, I think Stephen King.”

“What realm does he rule?” says Regina, looking at best half-interested in the answer.

“Oh my god, Regina.”

They're moving toward the computer desk out of sheer habit, and Emma sees pixellated flames. Yep. Kitchen fire. This Sim is on fire. Regina doesn't make a move to stop her when she reaches for the mouse and directs the forty-fourth Snow to safety. And adds a fire alarm.

Regina's still watching her. “Well?”

“He writes horror stories. He's from our world, King's just his last name. They're just stories.” She blinks. “At least as far as I know.” If the fucking clown shows up, she will _help_ Regina raze Storybrooke to the ground.

“Maybe I wanted us to be in a horror story instead,” Regina says.

“No, but,” says Emma. “Listen. He writes . . . there's one book he wrote called _Dreamcatcher_ , okay? It's about these weasels from outer space that are like actually inside people's asses. Alien ass weasels. From outer space.”

Regina stares at her as though she is from outer space.

“ _Ass weasels_ ,” Emma tells her.

Regina sighs. “Would you like something to drink?”

* * *

Like she's ever going to ingest something Regina made out of apples, and like she's really going to take something alcoholic in the middle of an _intervention_ , even an intervention that's gotten sidetracked into Stephen King and left her really wanting something alcoholic, which leaves soda. Regina's smile when Emma says so is very wide: my, what big teeth you have, Emma thinks, and feels disloyal to Ruby.

She takes the glass, takes a long gulp of what she guessed was Pepsi, thinks: _ah, mediocre root beer_ , and then the aftertaste hits and she actually, literally spits it out. Mostly back into the cup. Mostly.

Regina has the gall to look offended. “Miss Swan!”

“You gave me _Moxie_ ,” Emma croaks. She swipes the back of her hand across her mouth. “I thought we were past poison.”

Regina's poker face is impressive. “It's a local product, dear.”

“Okay,” says Emma. “You win. Maine is cursed. Maine is a curse.”

She looks at her cup. Moxie fizzes ominously at her. She sets it on the counter, with great care, as though it might explode.

“You still need to stop murdering Mary Margarets. I'm serious.”

“Or what?” says Regina, sneering distractedly at her. “You'll kill me?”

Emma stares. “No?” she says. Blinks. Rewinds the last few minutes of conversation. Remains confused. “That would be . . . a really weird thing to do to protest computer game murder?”

Regina actually looks embarrassed. “Oh,” she says. “I'm sorry, that was habit.”

“Can't imagine you needing more charisma points,” Emma says.

“Are you going swimming anytime soon?” says Regina. She really does have sharp teeth.

* * *

“Cider?” says Regina, once they've hung their jackets up. Henry's on some kick where his comic books are way more interesting than computer games, which leaves him flopped over and hogging the whole couch, and the two of them in the chairs by the computer desk, sizing each other up.

Emma raises her eyebrows. She hopes it looks regal and intimidating.

Regina looks at her with concern. “Do you have a tic?”

“We're not supposed to walk in the grass without pants on,” says Henry, from the couch. He flips a page. “Mary Margaret said. And she said to wear light colors if we go in the woods so we can see ticks easier.”

For a minute, his mothers are united in mild distaste.

“But I don't think ticks live in trees,” Henry decides.

That reminds Emma. “Hey,” she says to Regina. “Your apple tree. Why'd you say it was a Honeycrisp tree?”

“Excuse me?” says Regina.

“I know what a Honeycrisp apple looks like,” Emma says, feeling her anger rise at the cruelty all over again. “PLU code 3283. I was in produce at one of the grocery stores I worked at, and those were _not_ Honeycrisp.” She folds her arms. “Those were Red Delicious, Regina.”

Regina looks at the ceiling. “I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about.”

“You _told me_ you were giving me _Honeycrisp apples_ ,” Emma says, “and you gave me the worst breed of apple ever – cultivated. That was – look, you've done a lot of shitty things, but that was really evil of you.”

“I didn't say they were Honeycrisps,” Regina tells the ceiling. “I was simply moved to share an unrelated fact about the Honeycrisp at the same time I offered you some of the fruit from my tree. It's not my fault you read into it. You know what they say about assumptions.”

“They make an ass out of you and . . . umptions?” says Emma.

Regina looks disconcerted. “Well --”

Whatever comeback she has ready is interrupted by some alarmingly wet noises from the computer. Emma blinks, and then blinks again. “Wait wait wait, what – what are we doing?” she says, when blinking doesn't make it go away. “Regina! Regina, why did you buy the _vibrating bed?_ ”

Regina is frozen in her seat. “It was . . . aesthetically . . .”

“Do you understand how much therapy Henry is going to need?” Emma hisses. Henry is curled up on the couch with his comics, unconcerned. “Do you understand how much therapy _I'm_ going to need? _Archie_ might even need therapy of his own after --”

“You have your own house, you know!” Regina snaps, as though Emma is entirely responsible for Sim Emma's actions. “Don't pin this on _me._ ” She draws herself up as tall as she can in the ergonomic office chair. Her ergonomic, spinny office chair. Emma's office chair doesn't spin and it makes her ass hurt if she does too much paperwork. “And _Archie_ is a human turned into a cricket turned into a therapist with decades of false memories, so _maybe he should be in therapy of his own anyway._ ”

Emma blinks again. “Have you been thinking about that for a while?”

“Well,” says Regina, deflating, “one wonders . . . sometimes I remember that he never actually went to school.”

“Oh.” Emma furrows her brow. “You're right.” He just seems so well-adjusted. Then again, maybe it's because she's grading on a curve. “Maybe we should _all_ be in therapy.”

They look back at the computer screen.

“Can't you, like, stop them?” says Emma, searching for things to look at that aren't the computer screen, or Regina. Her eyes land on Henry, who's come up behind them while they were distracted.

“Oh, you guys are woohooing again?”

* * *

When Henry wanders outside, Regina stays at the computer desk, muttering something about how Sim Emma can't be trusted that Emma chooses not to hear. She's quiet for a while, which is wonderful in its own right, and which also means Emma can doodle elaborate mustaches on her sheriff paperwork, which is almost, but not quite, like being productive.

For a while it's almost peaceful.

“No,” Regina says, “no, no, no . . .”

“What?” Emma leans over her shoulder, squinting at the screen, and wonders if she can ask Regina to get a larger computer monitor. “Wait, Henry has all Fs? Did you not send him to school?” That can't be right; Regina is strict about Henry's grades. Regina is strict about Henry's grades with _everyone_ , including Mary Margaret.

“He was talking with _you_ ,” Regina says wretchedly. “He was playing it the whole time we were having lunch, and he never wants to send himself to school.”

They stare at the screen. For a second she wonders if it's some kind of glitch, because the man in green is outlined kind of funny, like his shadow is further back than it should be with the light. But he keeps moving down the sidewalk, steadily, inexorably.

“Maybe I can kill him,” Regina says.

“Um,” says Emma, trying to decide what threat level this kind of thinking is, and whether she should be calling an adult. She's not the adult here, is she? “Don't think he's going swimming.” Shit. Shit, she really is the adult here.

Regina's hand tenses, claw-like, on the mouse. “I have to stop him.”

This is where Emma the adult should soothingly explain that Regina is playing a computer game, and that it won't make any difference whatsoever if the imaginary social worker succeeds and the collection of pixels that looks like a vague illustration of Henry gets whisked away to --

There's nothing but gray around the edges of the lawn. Reminds her of something.

Hey, like the book. The illustrations in the book. Faded out around the edges.

Whisked away to --

“Delete the door,” she says, grabbing at Regina's arm. Regina looks up, wide-eyed.

“Right. The door.”

She clicks: once, twice. The front door is gone. Then the back door. Nothing but smooth wall, papered in deep maroon.

They stare at the screen.

“He's inside,” Emma says. “How is he inside? There's no _door._ ”

Regina 's hand moves frantically; the staircase vanishes. “Maybe I can start a fire in the kitchen --”

“Don't,” Emma says, “Henry can't get down –”

“Right.” The cursor skitters across the screen. They zoom in, and the social worker is there, in Henry's bedroom, and he's taking the man's hand like he _wants_ to leave, and what if it's not just a computer game, not in fucking Storybrooke, _what if –_

“Shit! How is he upstairs?”

“He has _magic_ ,” Regina breathes, absurdly.

Emma grabs for the mouse; Regina's hand falls away. “We can still . . . maybe he won't get out --”

“He's gone,” Regina says.

“No, there's still --”

“He's _gone._ ”

The social worker walks into the nothingness at the edge of the sidewalk, Henry's hand clasped in his.

“No.”

Emma's not even sure which one of them whispered it. She drops her hand from Regina's arm, and stands, a little too quickly. “Henry's still outside, right? He said he was going to be in the yard?” She doesn't wait for an answer. “I'm going to go . . . tell him it's getting dark.”

Please, she thinks, busting through the door, please let him be there.

* * *

“Ha ha,” Emma says, actually says the words, as they stand awkwardly by the desk, watching Henry scarf down the sandwich Regina made him. “We both got way too invested in that.”

“Indeed,” says Regina.

“Computer games, am I right?”

Regina just looks at her funny.

“Well, I think I'm right,” Emma says, suddenly unsure what she's right about.

They sit in a confused silence for a few minutes, while Henry chews and flips through his comic book.

Emma looks at the computer. “Are you gonna keep playing?”

It's another long minute before Regina answers. “I don't know.”

“You don't really have to -- well.” Emma searches for words. “There's other things to do with it. Like Mary Margaret pretty much just plays it for the interior decorating, she told me. Design the house, pick the furniture, you know. She's got like twelve mansions with different decorating schemes.”

Regina's forehead wrinkles. “How does she afford that? It takes forever to accumulate wealth.”

“Oh, she just uses the money cheat code.”

For a few seconds the room is entirely silent, except for the sound of Henry's chewing.

Then:

“Cheat code?” says Regina.

“You know, you just type in the code thing and you get a big chunk of change. She just does it over and over until she has enough to --”

“ _Cheat code?”_ says Regina.

* * *

“So on the plus side,” Emma tells the cell phone, “she's not murdering Snow White anymore.”

“That's great news!” says Archie.

“Because she set her computer on fire.”

“That,” says Archie, “that isn't great news.”

“I know,” Emma says, and drags a hand across her eyes. “You know, for a minute or two there I really thought -- I don't know, that it might be real? Or have some effect on the real world, I guess, the way the book did. Like, the guy came for Henry, and it just looked so much like the book, and for a second there I really started worrying that someone might really . . . but it's just a computer game.”

“That's right. Just a game,” Archie agrees.

“It's too bad, though,” she says. “Henry'd just bought her a copy of _Sim City._ Gold's probably not gonna let him return it, too.”

For a few seconds all she hears is static. Then Archie's voice, a little strangled: “Wait. You bought the game from _Gold?_ ”

* * *

As they drive back from Regina's, Henry looks solemnly at her from the passenger's seat. “Emma,” he says, “what's MS-DOS?”

Emma sighs, and takes a deep breath.

“Once upon a time," she begins.


End file.
